AS Dublin hurling victories go in the Anthony Daly era, this one may just prove the most significant, if a little misleading all the same.

A 13-point defeat of Clare in Croke Park on Saturday evening represented a first win in the qualifiers, an end to their championship hoodoo with Munster counties and set up the plum tie of a clash with Antrim for a spot in the last eight of the All-Ireland series for the second successive year.

Bet let's go back to the start of that sentence for a second. The part about Dublin being 13-point winners over Clare. Since when did that become the norm? The answer, of course, is it hasn't.

The match was widely viewed as a 50/50 sort of encounter going into the evening even if the usual riders about Dublin's lack of confidence in their own favourites’ tags against a hurling blueblood were hanging all over it.

Formlines fancied Clare, though. The Banner was raised once again in their ballsy Munster semi-final defeat by Waterford whereas Dublin's catnap against Kilkenny left them on the end of the sort of scratching the ‘revolution' had, we thought, consigned to history.

Yet there it was in glowing technicolour on the big screen adjoining a rain-sodden, oddly sparse Hill 16: Dublin 2-22 Clare 0-15. As an adaptation of that old soccer cliché, this was a game of four quarters.

The first was shared, Clare owned the third but decisively, Dublin dominated the second and last segments to secure a memorable win. For Dublin manager, Anthony Daly, it was a day of momentarily conflicting emotions, however.

“It was difficult to go down to the dressing room,” he admitted. “I got a moment coming in on the bus. I met (former Clare hurler) Tommy Gilfoyle coming in along and I thought ‘I'm on the wrong bus' but it was only a couple of moments.

That's all. I needed to be tuned in. “But it was hard to go down to the dressing room to see Alan Markham and Diarmuid McMahon and all these guys I played with.

There was no point being weak for the Dublin lads though.” Strong as Daly no doubt was on the line, some of his on-field lieutenants looked like they were comprised entirely of concrete on Saturday.

Joey Boland, for instance, has grown as a centre-back to the point where Ronan Fallon's self-imposed intercounty exile is no longer an issue.

So impressive was the Na Fianna man in the central channel of the Dublin defence, he would have been a shoo-in for man-of-the-match, but for the outstanding performance of David O'Callaghan.

All season, it's been a source of wonderment for the hardcore Dublin supporters (yes, they do exist, despite the pathetic showing in Croke Park on Saturday), quite where Dotsy’s confidence and form has gone but, against Clare at a time when the Dubs needed it most, he produced the sort of sensational display his talents have always threatened.

Starting at full-forward, he thrived on the early, quick ball coming from a dominant Dublin half-back line and rattled off six first-half points, four of which came in a run of nine unanswered scores from Dublin which forced them into a seven-point halftime lead.

“I'm delighted for him because he takes the down days very bad,” commented his manager afterwards. “He'd love Dublin hurling to get places. Fellas were hard on him.

Finally, he had three weeks solid training and he worked very hard himself. We thought he could do a job at full-forward if we could get it into him good and early.

“He's a very good player. He was determined to take on his man every time he got it today.” Daly's re-jigged attack worked a treat in that blazing purple patch with the recalled Peadar Carton and Declan O'Dwyer both starting well before fading in the second half.

Liam Rushe was a buzzing, dangerous presence who offered a bit of everything but only one score and overran a couple of silly balls while Alan McCrabbe was class personified at wing-forward.

Peter Kelly, in at the position of his recent four-star display for the Under 21s, wing-back, scored the point of the half after outfielding his man and launching over a monster effort from his own half.

And Clare simply couldn't get their danger men on the ball. Ger O'Loughlin opted to stick Darach Honan in at corner-forward, presumably in the hope that Tomás Brady would follow, but Oisín Gough comprehensively won that battle before a late Honan renaissance in the second half briefly threatened Gary Maguire's goal.

Fingers will be pointed at O'Loughlin too for leaving Cian Dillon to rot on O'Callaghan for all but one of his first-half points but the genesis for the blue dominance was much further out the field, with Stephen Hiney, Boland and Kelly all commanding along Dublin's '45.

Yet for all their superiority, experience has taught us not to completely rule out a Dublin deflation against more traditional hurling counties. Certainly, Daly has learned of their narcoleptic tendencies the hard way.

RUTHLESS

“The last thing we said when we went out after half time was that they were going to come at us,” he said.

“I know Sparrow almost intimately and I knew him and Doyler (Liam Doyle) would be down there going bananas.

We tried to warn fellas but our lads, they can tune out so easily and think the work is done.

“The few scores before half-time were crucial for Clare. Instead of driving it on and killing it off ... it's just inexperience, I think, of the big days and not having that ruthless streak you would get off a Cork or Kilkenny or Tipp. We haven't learned that yet.”

By the 44th minute, Dublin's heads were spinning, Daly had moved the deckchairs around and Clare were thriving. John Conlon's point at that juncture represented Clare's eight in succession and the gap was closed to just one.

Cue Peter Kelly's long clearance, Rushe's opportune attempt to connect/ put the Clare keeper off and Donal Touhy's misjudgement of the flight and a Dublin goal, a score that almost killed the Banner resistance completely.

Clare wing-back, Patrick Donnellan was then stretchered off after coming off worse in a collision with Stephen Hiney, a hold up which drained all life from the game and Dublin duly capitalised.

Alan McCrabbe launched over the first of two sublime sideline cuts and Clare seemed to baulk at the prospect of having to come back all over again.

O'Callaghan's genius created another goal chance and his unselfishness gave Simon Lambert a bounty of 1-1 from the bench and Dublin proceeded to twist the knife in the Clare hearts.

All of a sudden, Dublin's season doesn't seem so retrograde though Daly never saw it any other way. “I know most of ye' think we had a poor league,” he added.

“I was much happier with the league. “Last year, teams were taking us ... Galway landed up on a bus last year – they left Galway at half six, they weren't tuned it at all.

“Waterford arrived up and went to the boxing last year and had a bit of a night out. We beat them and we beat the Cork team that were there because of the strike.

“This year, our league was much better. We had two awful flop days. We know we were better than we were last year and I think today went a bit to showing that.

“We'll have a dogfight again next week,” he added. “We'll have to come down to come up again next week.”